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Gentlemen?

Gentlemen?

Parker scowled at Jarod and then at the door he held open.

Gentleman, indeed.

He gestured for her to exit, and smiled sweetly when she acquiesced.

She averted her gaze, feigned disinterest, boredom Fuck him- yes, him and the white stallion he rode in on and surveyed the corridor, east to west. "Where is everyone?" Parker inquired in a hushed whisper, and observed with growing dread the easy, confident smile tugging at Jarod's lips.

"Exactly where I want them to be, Miss Parker." Answered Jarod neutrally.

"Right." She drawled, sardonically. "Make no mistake, Jarod," Parker cautioned, "they will never allow you to walk out of here."

"No?" He inquired softly with a squint of skepticism.

Parker shook her head, gravely expounded, "They're going to ambush you."

"Hmm," Came Jarod's guttural hum, "now that wouldn't be very nice of them."

"Nice?" Parker returned, piqued, "No, it's not going to be nice. You're walking into a trap, you're unarmed, undermanned. This is your last chance to return my gun and-"

"Contrarily, Miss Parker," he rejoined impassively with a soupçon of arrogance and a thick brow lifted in amusement, in challenge, "I am armed and not only am I leaving the Centre," he continued softly, sidling closer and fashioning a conspiratorial leer, "I'm taking you with me."

Parker drew a breath, pressed her lips together in a tight line. She shuddered in anger and rolled her eyes at his toothy grin, "Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on or-"

"Or." Jarod interrupted brusquely, peremptorily, and then pulled open the board room door. "After you, Miss Parker." He said amiably.

"Jarod-"

"After you, Miss Parker." He reasserted sharply, coolly, pressing his palm lightly to the small of her back.

Parker shrugged out of the semi embrace, and entered the room of her own volition- that's what she told herself.

"I believe you know Troy, Ethan and Kyle. And this," Jarod said, indicating the large black man, "is Jaha."

"Sir." Parker said and observed warily the somber nod of head with which she was acknowledged, merely tolerated.

Little else could be gleaned by Parker as Jarod chose to communicate with the African in bastardized Cilubà and Swahili-Kikongo fusion. The meeting adjourned after a grueling four and half hours whereupon Parker's confusion increased exponentially: Jaha advanced on Jarod, came to an abrupt halt and bent fully and swiftly at his waist in an acquiescent bow.

Parker observed, in horror, as Jaha smiled amiably and then exited, with a parade of men falling in line behind him.

"Where are they going?" Parker asked. "Africa?"

Jarod shook his head, answered impassively, "Into exile."

"That's what they want you to believe." She hissed. "You're insane if you truly believe that this is over."

"Jarod," Kyle snarled, "if you don't shut her up, I-"

"You'll what?" Parker hissed, and then wheeled around and sought out Ethan and Troy— potential allies— who were listening intently to their wireless headsets. Suddenly, they turned and departed via a narrow egress that Parker hadn't even been aware existed. Damn it.

"Enough." Jarod demanded, sharply. "Both of you. I want you to radio the jet, Kyle."

Kyle obeyed, grudgingly, and keyed his headset.

"Jet?" Parker inquired.

"Yes," Jarod answered, "we're taking a little trip."

"I'm not going anywhere with you." She asserted, feinted to Jarod's left, and then pivoted suddenly, and found herself looking down twin barrels of death, lethal infinity.

Parker thought it oddly ironic that a figure eight was the last thing a person lined up in Kyle's sights would see.

"Kyle." Jarod intervened.

"Of course." Kyle grinned. "I have my own." He said, handing the gun off to Jarod. Armed, indeed. The bastard.

Both men were armed. Well armed, in fact.

Kyle wore a Glock, and a pump action shotgun (it was of the tactical variety, short barreled, and Parker couldn't help but be impressed by the racking action- even if the weapon was leveled at her thigh), and he had a grenade launcher stashed away inside a secret compartment, an unholy reliquary, that had been built into the white T-shaped table.

"Miss Parker?" Jarod said with some urgency. At last, Parker met his impatient gaze, obvserved as he jerked his head to the side, indicating that she should walk. Or else.

She suspected the gun wasn't loaded. Jarod wouldn't dare point a loaded gun at me.

An opportunity to confirm (or deny) the suspicion never presented itself. There had been no ambush, not while approaching Concourse Twelve and not on the tarmac.

They weren't blown out of the sky, nor were they escorted by the Triumvirate's fleet of jets to an undisclosed location and summarily executed.

She endured with sangfroid the first leg of the flight, behaved as if she had ordered the jet when in fact she had been ordered at gun point to board it. Parker deemed the abduction unfathomable, too horrible to contemplate.

What the hell is Jarod trying to prove? Why is Jaha eating out of his hand? Where the hell are we going?

Cool indifference dissolved, was replaced with anxiety, with anger; Jarod was certain that he could hear the pretenses drop. She wanted an explanation, demanded an explanation; instead, she was issued an apology.

"I'm sorry." Jarod's voice was graveled baritone, wheedling, choked with remorse. Concern creased Parker's brow; she feared he was ill, stopped herself from laying the back of her hand across his forehead. "I didn't want it to come to this. I never wanted this."

"You never wanted to become the men who snatched you from your bed?" She returned with equal measures of hostility and incredulity.

Jarod leaned forward, his hands stretched wide across his legs. "Miss Parker," he said, softly, "I didn't snatch you from your bed, and you are not a child. I intend to do you no harm. Remember: you are not innocent in all of this." He shrugged. "None of us are."

"What, exactly, do you intend to do with me, Jarod?"

"Uh," Jarod intended to hedge; he wasn't going to tell her about the scrolls, that he had read them (the text had been upside down and Mr. Parker's heavy panting had been rather distracting, and he'd been trying to escape his binds, however, he'd read them nevertheless) the same night her father had. He had no intention of reciting to her the words: the Chosen, a boy named Jarod who will reign-

Lunacy!

"Jaha wanted you," he vomited the words, "did you know that?"

Parker's eyes widened in surprise.

"It would have been rather remiss of me to allow him to abduct you."

"Right." She cooed. "Instead, you abducted me. What aren't you telling me, Jarod?"

Jarod rose. "I suggest you sleep now."

"Why?"

He glanced at his watch and informed the hour hand: "It's past your bedtime."

"No." She said, brusquely, and frowned; he'd misunderstood. "Why did you stop him?"

Jarod frowned, his jaw tightened. "Why didn't I allow Jaha to take you?" Jarod asked for the sake of clarification and observed Parker's nearly imperceptible nod.

"Sleep." He simply answered.

Parker glared at his retreating form and then swung her gaze skyward and flung herself, angrily, against the seat.

Jarod had a penchant for being cryptic; usually, however, he tossed her a breadcrumb, a hint intended to pacify her, a little something sweet to dissuade her from shooting him and dragging him to the Centre.

Parker was troubled by his behavior, his apology and abstruseness, the absence of profundity. She realized suddenly that he no longer had to placate her, he didn't have to be kind or provide her with answers- answers to questions that, as Centre Chairwoman, she should have known. He held all of the cards now, all of the pieces of the puzzle and she was out of the loop, truly an outcast.

She refused, however, to take orders from Jarod, refused to sleep- it was act of defiance. And, as par for her usual course, only she suffered the results of that defiance.

Parker slept through what she was certain would be her only opportunity to escape, and she only reached that conclusion when she awoke with a start in an empty nondescript sedan.

Jarod was paying for fuel and Kyle was returning from the adjoined fast food establishment with a large white paper bag that was already transparent courtesy of the splotches of fat seeping through.

"Hungry?" Kyle asked.

"No." Parker snarled.

"No?"

"No." She averred. "I'd kill for a cup of coffee."

"I've no doubt that you would kill for less, Miss Parker." Kyle returned and then whistled through his teeth. "Caffeine withdrawals are a bitch." He added as he retrieved his mobile and punched in a number. "One extra large coffee," he sang, "to go. What? Fine, I'll tell her." Kyle tossed a glance over his shoulder. "The cappuccino machines are in the back, near the restrooms- if you catch his drift; if you don't, I'll speak plainly: you might want to take a leak now."

"Mm you're a real charmer." Parker returned dryly and opened the door.

"Oh, I know." He called after her. "Don't forget to flush and wash your hands."

She was enraged, positively enraged, was certain she might kill Jarod, and she might have indeed done that had her attention, and rage, not been diverted elsewhere.

The pleasant faced toddler had a contagious laugh, bouncy dark curls and wore a sagging diaper and yellow sundress stained with what Parker guessed was grape juice. Presently, the girl was engaged in a game of peek-a-boo with Jarod and having a grand time, was- at least until a tall, stout, bespectacled woman with pinched features strode into the store screaming obscenities.

She was hunched in the shoulders and, Jarod opined, bore a slight resemblance to a caricature of Hugo's Quasimodo. Her brown eyes narrowed and disappeared into the deeply etched crow's feet gathered at her temples.

Her thick, black eyebrows were perpetually slanted and situated precisely one inch above the ebony squares that framed her field of vision; both brows were visible through the platinum blond hair that hung— dreadlock-esque— in stiff ringlets.

She had the waddling gait that was de rigueur among many all-you-can-eat buffeteers, and clearly, Parker mused cruelly, suffered a surfeit of nourishment; each step she took vibrated her face and loosened stray crumbs from her thick, square chin that, in turn, rained down upon the pink jogging suit she wore.

The woman advanced rapidly, nevertheless, with a speed heretofore unimagined by Parker, and dropped a wadded up napkin from her chubby hand. She then unceremoniously grabbed a fistful of dark curls and yanked the toddler a good three inches off the floor. "There ya are! I tole ya a thousant times not to wanda off! Whut the hell is wron' wit' ya? Are ya stupid?"

Jarod was still processing. Parker was poised for battle, and across the room in three long strides. She captured the woman's left elbow, wrenched her arm high behind her back. "Let. Her. Go." Parker snarled, punctuating her words with a forward jerk.

The woman howled in pain, and released the toddler (who instinctively tottered across the room and into Jarod's open arms) and then she swung around, threw a punch.

Parker ducked, feinted to the right, threw a punch that connected with the woman's right cheek, and then pivoted, ducked. She grabbed a fistful of crunchy over-moussed hair a taste of the bitch's own medicine and kicked- kicked the woman through the massive store-front display. The woman's body came to an ungainly stop near the plate glass window upon which a bas-relief Christ stared stoically at the comings and goings below, perhaps disparaging the unfavorable condition of the human condition.

There was a collective gasp, unhinged jaws, two manic voices murmuring their concerns to 911 operators.

No one was more appalled (or impressed) than Kyle. He leapt from the car when Jarod rang him. From the parking lot it was quite obvious that a fracas of some sort was in full swing and he could only wonder what sort of riot Parker had instigated. The woman was trouble, dead weight. Nothing but trouble, and Jarod was an idiot for sparing her.

Kyle came to a halt in the store entrance, observed the various cans rolling languidly across the floor, the dozens of boxes crushed beneath a rather heavy woman with a split lip and an expression of surprise etched upon her chubby face. He sought out Jarod, noted the sobbing toddler and guessed the rest. He couldn't help but smirk when Parker dropped to a low crouch and grabbed the aforementioned woman by the lapels of her blouse. "People like you should be sterilized."

"She wundered off." Came the woman's weak explanation. "I don't like to hit 'er, but when she's bad I have to teach 'er a lessen."

"A lesson?" Parker repeated with a snort of disdain. "I have a lesson for you: it's her job to wander, it's your job to watch her." Parker shook her head, wheeled around, left the woman on the floor and struggling to sit.

"I was watchin 'er! I always watch 'er. I tole 'er to stay in the car an' color."

"In the car?" The manager of the fast food establishment asked, incredulously. "She was in the car all that time? While you were inside eating? You left her in the car?" He asked again, his hairy gray brows furrowed over startling blue eyes that regarded road-weary travelers through wire rimmed spectacles. He was thin and tall, well over sixty, and possessed the stoop of someone who worked for a living. He was a war Veteran and a grandfather and he simply could not comprehend such cruelty. His eyes filled with tears. "In this heat?" He queried and then made the sign of the cross and murmured sotto voce, "Pope on a Pogo!"

"She's my child," the mother exclaimed, "an' I can do as I damn well please with 'er. I brought 'er into this world an' I can take 'er right back out again. I gave 'er life!"

Parker froze, and then whirled around once more, a neat pirouette on four inch heels. She leaned in close for the parting shot, thrust a trembling hand towards the sobbing toddler and with such fury that Jarod started: "She didn't ask to be born," Parker hissed, "not to the likes of you," she added contemptuously, dragging her gaze over the woman, a scowl of disgust pinching her features. "I'd wander off too if you were my mother."

Kyle observed Parker's departing form, the nearly undetectable limp. He whistled through his teeth, shook his head. That one is hell in heels. "You know," He said, sidling up close to his brother, "your Miss Parker isn't half bad."

"No," Jarod agreed with an impish grin, "no, she isn't."

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